There was some good news for homebuyers Thursday. After three months of rising national median payment increases for mortgages applied for by purchase applicants, affordability improved slightly, decreasing from $2,198 in May to $2,191 in June.

The June median payment, while down $7 from May, was still up $19 from one year ago — a 0.9% increase. It was the first decrease since February.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released the data in its monthly Purchase Applications Payment Index (PAPI), a metric used to gauge how new monthly mortgage payments vary across time relative to income.

Edward Seiler, MBA’s associate vice president of housing economics and executive director of the Research Institute for Housing America (RIHA), said prospective homebuyers benefited from lower loan application amounts despite a slight increase in mortgage rates.

“While affordability continues to vary across markets, steady income growth has outpaced the increase in monthly mortgage payments over the past year, providing prospective homebuyers with modest relief,” Seiler said.

The index also showed median mortgage payments for conventional loan applicants were essentially flat both month over month and year over year. At $2,209, they were down slightly from $2,211 in May and up from $2,205 in June 2025.

National median mortgage payments for Federal Housing Administration loan applicants also saw little variation, decreasing from May to June by just $1, and up $4 from one year ago.

PAPI uses data from MBA’s weekly applications survey to calculate mortgage payments and combines it with usual weekly earnings data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to measure payment burdens relative to income. Usual weekly earnings represent pretax earnings for full-time wage and salary workers, including overtime, commissions and tips, and are not seasonally adjusted.